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Social Maturity: how have social media conversations about Obesity management and AOMs evolved with the market in two key countries?
Aug 07, 2025
In the fast-moving landscape of obesity management, social media has emerged as a powerful lens through which patient sentiment, brand perception, and treatment experiences are captured. Social media listening to conversations by patients and other members of the public on disease perception and treatment experience perception and use has become an important tool for pharmaceutical companies to understand conditions and medications as another dimension of market insight, and as a tool for alerts, planning and within regulatory constraints, engagement. Social media is often messy, complex and sometimes only a partial reflection of clinical realities, but for obesity it is unignorable, because it is it is where patients and potential patients are getting significant amounts of their information about their condition, therapies and pharmacotherapies, and also frequently where they are documenting the ways in which they are evolving their use of AOMs in response to personal and economic circumstances, and the latest innovations. Social media listening in the obesity space can therefore paint a picture of the current landscape but also be a harbinger of future trends.
In this blog we distill insights from a comprehensive IQVIA social intelligence report analyzing over 15 million online mentions related to obesity and anti-obesity medications (AOMs) across the US and UK. We will principally be discussing the new Anti-Obesity Medications (AOMs), the generic names of which are semaglutide (Novo Nordisk) and tirzepatide (Eli Lilly). Semaglutide brand names are Ozempic when used to treat diabetes, and Wegovy when used to treat obesity. Tirzepatide is branded Zepbound in the US for obesity and Mounjaro in the US to treat diabetes, and Mounjaro for both its diabetes and obesity indications in the UK.
Obesity management is a high volume and rapidly moving online conversation, spread across multiple channels
Online news portals, X (formerly Twitter), and forums were seen to be popular platforms for obesity and brand related mentions. Over the past year, more than 15 M mentions of obesity or obesity management were observed by IQVIA Social Media listening online; 90% of the mentions were from the US- higher in proportion to US population than for the UK, although both would be considered relatively mature markets for AOMs both in terms of the timeline of when the new AOMs were launched and also the size of patient base for prescription medicine use, both insured (US) and out of pocket. Online news and X are the highest volume channels for conversations in both countries.
Social media conversations are still at high levels and are news sensitive. News about promising results of SURMOUNT-5 clinical trial and FDA approval of oral Wegovy may have led to the spike in online mentions in May 2025, with conversations specifically calling out the SURMOUNT-5 findings of greater efficacy for tirzepatide in reducing BMI compared to semaglutide.
Even though news about individual AOMs is a drive of social media conversation, brands of AOMs remain a minority of ~1.7 M social mentions related to obesity brands were observed in the last year; Ozempic/ Wegovy had the highest mentions in both US and UK, with Ozempic by far the most frequently mentioned, despite not having a label for obesity (Ozempic is the brand for the diabetes use of semaglutide, and was launched in the US in 2017, four years prior to the US launch of semaglutide as Wegovy for obesity). This “Ozempic effect” has been noted by IQVIA’s social media listening on obesity before – the very high profile news stories about the use of Ozempic by celebrities to lose weight has had an enduring effect in public consciousness and social media discourse, one which even high levels of Direct to Consumer TV ad spending by Novo Nordisk for Wegovy (the brand was #2 in total spend for Q2 2025 in the US) has so far failed to change.
Social Media conversations reveal how patients feel about their experience with the use of the new AOMs, both positive and negative
Social media listening is valuable to provide an up to the minute and candid view from patients on their experience of AOMs, which is broadly positive. Based on sample analysis of 11,431 conversations, 67% of the patients who shared their experiences with anti-obesity medications perceived the drugs to be effective due to quick onset of action, improved Quality of Life, and social acceptance.
Positive conversations in this sample (67%) reported, as outlined in Exhibit 1, below, that:
- Patients who experienced visible changes during their weight loss journey and experienced an enhanced quality of life, expressed satisfaction with treatment, and encouraged online peers to start treatment
- Patients discussed visible drug effectiveness – Benefits of drugs and visible change in weight within a short span after treatment initiation were a frequent online conversaton
- Enhanced Quality of Life – when users mentioned experiencing better Quality of Life, they cited examples such as changes in their daily routine and reduced disease burden
Patients appreciate and celebrate the broader benefits of the use of AOMs, including increased social acceptance– patients mentioned being acknowledged and appreciated for their appearance, but also more clinical benefits, focusing on better management of co-morbidities of their obesity.
However, one third of the conversations had a more negative tone, with severe side effects and cost concerns, which led patients to search for better options to reach their weight loss goals. Cost was a topic where patients discussed their current out of pocket expenses on treatment and expressed concerns about long term affordability and continuity. It’s worth noting that this will be an evolving and also a country specific discussion, and only two countries were sampled in this listening exercise. The US has a complex patchwork of coverage of AOMs, with Medicare coverage for patients with co-morbidities for which AOMs have labels, some Medicaid coverage and private coverage for employees in many cases, as well as some out of pocket coverage. The UK has National Health Service coverage, but currently for a small group of patients restricted by severity of obesity and weight related co-morbidities, alongside a much larger and growing out of pocket prescription medicine market. Other countries in Europe mostly have smaller but still rapidly growing out of pocket markets, and as of mid-2025, no reimbursed coverage, except for Switzerland.
During 2024, supply constraints existed alongside cost concerns, but these supply issues have largely been alleviated in 2025. However online conversations showed that due to high demand and access constraints of GLP-1 drugs, patients reached out to their online peers for ways to continue on AOMs.
Exhibit 1
Although patients share information about their AOM experiences, Healthcare professionals remain a key decision maker/supporter on switching treatments
With two modern AOMs in the market, and more new AOMs to come from 2026 onwards, giving a wider choice which will include oral agents, different mechanisms of action, and for some countries (but not the US or UK) the choice from 2026 of off patent, cheaper versions of semaglutide, how patients switch between different types of AOM and who or what influences that decision is an important question for which social media listening provides some interesting early clues on direction.
As shown in Exhibit 2, below, healthcare professional (HCP) recommendation was the most frequently cited reason for patients to switch treatments, followed by patient directed reasons, with side effects almost as frequent as HCP recommendation, followed by reduced or halted efficacy and in last place cost concerns. This last point is interesting given a significant group of the users in the UK especially will undoubtedly be paying for their AOMs out of pocket, but it should be remembered that these AOM users are all likely relatively wealthy to be able to afford these agents at current prices. There remains a significant group of people living with obesity who have not had the opportunity to access these agents because they cannot afford to pay out of pocket at current prices and do not yet have access to reimbursed AOMs.
Exhibit 2
Switching between doses (which is an expected part of initial weight loss treatment, as patients are meant to start on a low dose and move to higher doses if they find that they can tolerate them) is most frequently reported as would be expected, but switching between medications is already, if social media conversations are to be a guide, a well-established practice. Patients often reported switching between doses before changing to a different drug. While Mounjaro/ Zepbound was perceived to be more effective, patients opted/ switched to Wegovy due to their perception of severe side-effects and cost concerns. Users who reported switching the other way to Mounjaro/Zepbound cited reports of visible efficacy and HCP recommendations.
Social media conversations about maintaining weight loss
As of mid-2025, American patients have had access to Wegovy for up to four years (launched June 2021) and to Zepbound for over 18 months (launched November 2023). The equivalent periods for the UK are almost 2 years for Wegovy and 18 months for Mounjaro. In both cases it should be noted that that did not mean full availability from those dates – both products have seen later roll outs of doses and, until 2025, often significant shortages which would have interrupted supply for individuals. However, it is reasonable to assume that during the first half of 2025, a substantial number of users of AOMs in the UK and US had access to AOMs for long enough to have the opportunity to achieve weight loss goals and, if successful, be discussing what happens next. Our social media conversation listening reveals very frequent conversations about continuing treatment once weight goals were reached – in fact, almost 90% of conversations were about either continuing on an AOM but at a lower dose or discontinuing for a period and then re-starting. Of course, the share of conversations should not be translated into any estimates of the % of people living with obesity who aim to use AOMs to help maintain their weight loss – there may be data collection or other reasons why those who simply achieve weight loss and then discontinue AOMs permanently do not discuss it on social media – but it is an important indicator which real world data on the longitudinal use of AOMs will provide more hard data on.
Exhibit 3
Social maturity: where are these social media conversations suggesting the AOM market is headed?
The market for AOMs enters a new phase in 2026. There will undoubtedly be new product launches, the most likely of which in the US and possibly the UK will be the advent of the first oral agents, oral semaglutide from Novo Nordisk and orflorglipron, an oral small molecule pill from Eli Lilly. Outside the US and Europe, off patent semaglutide will become available for the first time, with both Canada and India, countries with large English-speaking populations on social media, among the first countries to see off patent versions of semaglutide. It’s likely that the out of pocket market will continue to grow in Europe, including the UK, and that a reimbursed segment of AOM use will expand in the UK and initiate in some European countries. Alongside these events, millions of people living with obesity and using AOMs will be on their weight loss journey and discussing their experience and perspectives on social media. The treatment of obesity is unusual, possibly unique, in that it is the users of AOMs who are often at the leading edge of obesity practice and often very far ahead of where payers and policy makers are. Whilst social media listening can be messy and misleading, the insights into obesity, by virtue of their timeliness and candour are vital to understand the next trends within the AOM market. It is clear from this social media listening exercise that the next stage of evolution will see increased switching between strengths and active agents, bringing the need to understand motives and decision makers behind this, as well as the critical question of when and how people maintaining weight loss do so in the long term. As we seek to answer those questions, social media listening will once again add a vital dimension.